Rahul Gandhi's amazing potato magic

​When Narendra Modi made a speech a few days ago declaring that Rahul Gandhi was too scared of failure to campaign in Gujarat, perhaps Modi was hoping to goad the Congress messiah into entering the fray.

If that was the idea, then it has come through in spades for Narendra bhai, since Rahul Gandhi did come, did make a campaign speech and in typical Rahul-ian style, allegedly delivered this gem -

"Potatoes are sold for 3 Rupees a kilo, a packet of chips is sold at 10 Rupees. Who loses finally?"

To give the Gandhi heir the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he meant the phrase metaphorically.

Perhaps he was trying to drive home the point that raw vegetables are sold at low costs but packaged edibles made from those vegetables are sold are a much higher price.

Maybe.

Although, even by that logic, a 3 Rupees to 10 Rupees conversion, when you include things like packaging, storing, shipping, cooking, salaries for employees etc is still a reasonably low margin.

Whether he even made the statement or not and if he did, whatever he intent may have been is still unclear. We cannot, as of yet, verify the authenticity of this statement.

But the alleged statement has spread through the Internet like wildfire, leading to quite a few jokes and wise cracks.

Here are some of the common trends -

"Maybe Rahul Gandhi has bought his father's speech from the 1980s."

"I would love to purchase it at that rate. Where can I buy potatoes at 3 rupees a kilo?"

"If potatoes are being sold that cheaply in Gujarat, kudos to Narendra Modi."

You can find some more interesting tweets below.

For the record though, the wholesale prices of potatoes in Gujarat (which can be found through a brief Google search) hover around 9.50 to 10 Rupees a kilo while the retail price in cities like Bangalore and Chennai hover around 15 - 20 rupees a kilo, depending on availability and type.